This disclosure relates to ranking search results based on context.
A search engine allows a user to provide a search query for which search results are returned in response. However, some search queries might not lead to the results for which the user is searching. For example, if a user enters the search query “mobile phone,” the user may be confronted with search results that include a broad spectrum of content, including retailers selling mobile phones, definitions associated with mobile phones, news articles about particular mobile phones, etc. However, a user is typically only searching for content related to a singular context. For example, the user entering the query “mobile phone” might actually be shopping for mobile phones. Thus, the query results in too much content being identified by the search engine.
Click models are used by conventional search engines to modify the ranking of search results in an attempt to provide more relevant results. Click models relate queries to search results that were selected for those queries along with statistics associated with those search results. This mapping of queries to user-selected search results can be interpreted as a signal of relevance between queries and search results, and can thus be used to rank search results in response to queries. While the use of click models can result in a more focused context for search results, the most popular context is not necessarily the context in which the user is interested.